The Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) held the first colloquium of its Caribbean Media Viability Initiative (CMVI) online on November 10, 2026. Speakers examined why Caribbean media houses are closing and what it will take to keep credible journalism alive.

CBU President Anthony Greene opened by pointing to closures, layoffs and consolidation across print, broadcast and digital media. “CBU has decided to be more than a witness to these developments,” he said. “Instead, we’ve committed to facilitating and leading an evidence-based sectoral response.”

Moderator Joseph Cox, CMVI Advisor, argued that media viability “is not simply a financing problem. It is an economic, institutional, and organizational design problem.” He proposed a regional compact: independent financing for public interest journalism, a study of a regional media investment vehicle, and shared capabilities in technology, verification and bargaining with global platforms.

Dr Claire Grant, Immediate Past President of the CBU, shared preliminary findings from the CBU Media Industry Overview. They include 601 radio services and more than 142 over-the-air TV stations across 12 territories. She warned that the Caribbean is one of the last regions still broadcasting television in analogue, putting free-to-air access at risk during disasters. “If we’re not telling our stories, who’s going to tell our stories?” she asked.

In his keynote, Prof. C. Justin Robinson, Principal of The UWI Five Islands Campus, said the closures of Searchlight, Newsday and Stabroek News took a hundred years of journalism with them in nine months. “We didn’t lose the reader,” he said. “What we lost is the tollbooth.” He noted that weaker local media can even raise government borrowing costs. He called for shared subscriptions, arm’s-length public interest funding and an endowment fund. “No one is coming to save us,” he said.

In the Q&A, participants discussed how to bring regional governments into the conversation, the need for CARICOM to negotiate with global platforms as one bloc, and the urgency of preserving the region’s media archives.

“Who pays for the truth? We all do,” Robinson concluded. “The only choice is how.”

The colloquium is the first in a year-long series that will lead to a Caribbean Media Viability Roadmap in August 2027. Watch the full session above.